Charlize Theron gushes about beau: "It's nice to be not single"

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The loved-up pair have been packing on the PDA at charity galas and looking completely smitten with each other on the red carpet, and now the 38-year-old star has decided to shed some light on her newfound happiness with Penn in Esquire U.K.'s July edition.

"It was nice to be single and now it's nice to be not single," Theron revealed to the magazine. "I'm sure some people would be like, 'I would never want to have that life,'" Theron explained of her unmarried status. "That's not necessarily what a lot of women want."

However, for many years motherhood was more important to the South African-born star — who looks incredible on the cover of Esquire, which was shot by celebrity photographer Terry Richardson — and she was happy to wait for the right man to come along before she decided to share her time with someone other than her adopted son Jackson, 2.

"I'm just saying, a life is good if it's the life that you want. I am living my life in a way that if tomorrow it ended — and I hope not because I have a kid — but if it did, this was the life that I really wanted to live," she confessed. "But I work at that, you know?"

So what has motherhood meant to the AMillion Ways to Die in the West actress, and why did she and former beau Stuart Townsend never settle down and start a family together?

"In his defense, [Theron said of Townsend] it was not that he didn't want to have children, it was just something that never worked out."

And it was years after her split with longtime boyfriend Townsend that Theron finally realized she was ready to open her heart to another man.

"Then one day you go: Oh, [Jackson's] almost two now, and he has his little activities that he goes to and he's got a bedtime now, and you have more time again. And it's like if you are open to something, if you just let it happen, it will happen. When you least expect it."